Angel of Death

by J. Robert King

I was beginning to enjoy this game. It was the opposite of what I’d been doing: instead of arranging someone else’s death, I was arranging my own life. “The rape room guy sticks a hook through me, from here to here, and hangs me from the ceiling. I hang that way, upsidedown, for three days until the hook rips through my stomach muscles.”

  “Expert testimony,” Billings said with a shake of his head. “What’re you gonna do about that? They’d get a doctor to say that it was cut, not a rip mark. Of course, we could just dig up a doctor who’ll testify it’s definitely a rip mark – but that’ll cost more money.” He shrugged, taking comfort from his pantomime smoke.

  “Well, that was just one torture,” I continued. “I was there from 1991 to 2003 – thirteen years. After the first two or three years, they weren’t really trying for secrets. Not anymore. They were just having fun. They would entertain dignitaries by torturing the mad American.”

  “But we’re not there yet,” Billings said. “Just because you were a tortured MIA doesn’t give you a license to come back and kill Americans.”

  “Well, all right, so I get liberated when we take Baghdad. I think the tortures are over. I’ve been imprisoned in Hell, and now the angels have swept in to lift me away. George W. finds out about me and wants to use my story. I’m his boy – the unfinished business his father left behind, business that the son took care of.”

  “Right. Right,” Billings said, rubbing his hands together. “So, why have we never heard of you?”

  I stared ahead of us, like I could see it all. “It’s what I saw. I saw a massacre.”

  “Oh, this is good.”

  “Seventy-five virgins in burkhas, three hundred orphans in their care – all of them rushing out of a mosque that was collapsing because of missile fire and the brigade that saved me firing. Firing. Firing. Fifteen seconds of automatic weapons fire, and four hundred Iraqis dead, and the MIA American who witnessed it all, who is supposed to pose with George W in the Rose Garden but who blows the whistle – he is handcuffed and hooded and carried away to Gitmo. And the angels have turned to demons, and the tortures begin again.”

  “You’re on to something there,” Billings replied quietly. A feverish glow filled his eyes. “But how did you get back to this country?”

  “They tortured me, got everything I knew and then some – all the horrors of this ongoing war. Then, when they knew they had everything out of me, they tortured me to death.”

  “But you didn’t die?”

  “I didn’t. It was a trick I’d learned those thirteen years in the rape rooms. I could stop my breathing. Let them walk away thinking they’d done it. But then I’d wake up again twenty minutes later.”

  “In Iraq they called you Lazarus.”

  “Yeah. Lazarus. Except in Gitmo, they didn’t know that. You lie still long enough in all that blood, getting cold on the floor, not breathing whenever they’re looking, not responding whenever they kick – soon enough they think you’re really and truly dead. They bodybagged me, figured they’d hide the murder of one of their own by saying I was found on a roadside in the Triangle of Death, stuck me on a Hercules cargo plane, and sent me back with a hundred other corpses to some base south of the border.

  “The thing was, I wasn’t a corpse. I slipped out of my bag, dressed in some airman’s clothes, and helped the crew offload bodies. Then, I just disappeared, and sneaked into America.”

  “It’s perfect. The government wiped all your records. Disavowed. You don’t have to create false records because when the government wants you not to exist –

  man, you don’t exist. The very fact that there is no evidence of your existence is evidence of the very story you’re telling! And then coming in illegal from Mexico

  – that’s the new American Dream. You’re an archetype, Mr Doe. Jesus Christ, you are an angel,” said Billings with a brutal laugh.

  “I was,” I responded ruefully. My interest in this game was flagging. It was the opposite of what I had been doing. Instead of assuring truth, I was creating a lie. “Look, wouldn’t it be better to tell the truth? Most Americans believe in God. Many of those also believe in Jesus–”

  “Steer clear of saying you’re Jesus–”

  “Not Jesus, but like Jesus, divinity in the flesh.”

  “Forget it. That defense failed Manson.”

  “Yes, right,” I replied. “A defense. That’s what I want.”

  Billings nodded to himself and tugged on his upper lip. “Back to your story. It’s a huge lie, but that makes it perfect. The bigger the lie, the easier it is to believe. C’mon. I used to work for Halliburton! Look at the fucking war in Iraq. No justification. A huge lie, but a lot of money. And yet after all the evidence, people still want to believe.”

  “I don’t want to live a lie.”

  “You’re still not finished. You still have to make it clear why you killed people. Why you cut off their heads and hands. You’ve got to explain all this press about you thinking you’re an angel. People will say,

  ‘He’s just another crazy Midwest monster – another Dahmer or Gein or Gacy.’ You’re a killer, yeah – they got your prints and all – but you’ve got to convince them you’re a killer with a heart of gold.”

  “Can we stop?”

  “Let’s think about the symbolism of heads and hands. Heads are identity. They’re control. They’re government. Okay?”

  Resignedly, I said, “Okay.”

  “And hands. They’re the doers, the tools of the head. Okay?”

  “Whatever.”

  “So, it’s George HW who sent you to war – the head. And Saddam Hussein who wanted you tortured all those years – the head. And George W who wanted you tortured again – the head. When you cut off a head, you’re killing the part that killed you. Then, there are the hands – the folks who thrust you into battle, that dragged you into a rape room, that carried you into a secret prison. Without hands, the heads can do nothing.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, your victims – the ones they can tie you to –

  they had committed atrocities with their hands and heads, and you were stopping them, like you couldn’t stop the real monsters.” He turned to me and smiled cunningly. “Do you see what we’ve done here, John?

  We’ve given you not just a past, but an honest-togoodness defense.”

  I nodded, unnerved. I couldn’t tell whether Billings had taken hold of the lie or it had taken hold of him.

  “The press will love it. Your trial won’t be in the courts but in the media. You’re a blogger’s dream. We just need to plant a few false leads, make some implications – let your attorney discover all this stuff and grill you about it, so that it all seems to come from outside. Keep up with this business of being a fallen angel. They’ll say that’s the only way you could deal with the stress of your situation – to believe you could not be killed and your body was not really yours, only a ghostform. “And the business about killing twenty thousand people over fifteen years, that’s great Biblical material. It’d be even better if you could remember forty thousand. Forty is always a good, holy number. Maybe some reporter will even suggest that’s how many deaths you suffered at the hands of the Iraqis. Jesus, but I’m brilliant,” Billings concluded, gazing speculatively at the metal bunk above his head. “It’s just lucky for the world that all I ever wanted to do was get rich, not kill.”

  I rose. My legs were numb from sitting, and my mind from the fantasy. “Yes, Derek. Thank you for humoring me.” I climbed up into my bunk.

  “Humoring you?” he said. “I’m serious about this. You don’t have to do a thing, just plant the seeds and watch how fast a forest of falsehood grows up to protect you. See, they aren’t so mad about the killings; they’re just mad that you won’t even hint at why you did it. Give them the slightest hint of an explanation, and they’ll make an innocent lamb out of you.”

  I looked to the high, barred window, beyond the catwalk of our cell block. “Good night.”

  “Y
ou think I’m kidding. I’ll show you I’m serious. Tomorrow, my wife is going to visit–”

  “Good night.”

  He had only been trying to help, but lies would not save me. I’d never learned their nuances, never needed to spin them. Only God could save me now, whisking me away from this corporeal hell. And if God would not save me, I would cling to the truth. It was all I had left of my angelic past.

  Not all. As I lay there, calmly breathing the bluetinted air, an old, familiar intuition came to me. Derek Billings’s time was coming. His life would soon be up. He was to die in two weeks, just before his trial would begin.

  If I arranged his passing, made it a fitting and final end, perhaps God would take me back.

  Of course Derek was to die. He was the second human being I had latched on to after Donna. Killing him would be very difficult for me. Killing him would prove that my unhealthy bond with humans was at an end, that I could still slay efficiently and dispassionately when the time called for it. If I killed Derek Billings, God just might take me back.

  As he lay there on the bunk below mine, palpable in the still darkness, I could feel his mind churning the permutations of the salvation he planned for me. Meanwhile, I imagined him dying in a thousand ways

  – poisoned food, a knife in the back, a penny stuck in his throat; yes, that last would work well, poetic justice for the embezzler of electronic money to choke on real money – on the slightest amount of real money. The final touch, though, was to have a trusted comrade ram that coin in place.

  That was where I would come in.

  TWELVE

  It had taken a week for Leland to wrap up her duties as a cop and another week to prepare for her duties beside Azra. This phone call would finish the job.

  “Hello, Counselor Barnett, this is Detective Leland.”

  “Yes,” came the world-weary voice of a middle-aged black woman. “My receptionist told me who it was. My client has also told me about you, Detective – plenty about you.”

  “Well, let me tell you something about your client. He has no family or friends and no visible means of support.”

  “So he has said.”

  “Well, I’ve done some research and found a littleknown Wisconsin law meant to aid in handling the legal matters of Depression-era vagrants. An established citizen can be declared a ‘citizen advocate’ for a person with no family or friends and no visible means of support. The advocate enjoys rights of visitation with the person as well as exemption from testifying against him.”

  “Detective, I am his advocate.”

  “You are his legal advocate. But I have paperwork that, once he signs it, will make me his citizen advocate,” Leland said.

  “You’re a cop – the cop that put him away!”

  “I’m off the case – on administrative leave. I’ll fax you the paperwork, which you can review and present to Azra.”

  “I’ll tell him not to sign.”

  “I know you will, but he’ll sign anyway.”

  “I know he will.”

  Counselor Barnett received the fax and took it, incensed, to Azra. He read it over with delight and signed it and demanded that Barnett fax it back along with all her notes from their interviews.

  When Leland’s fax machine spooled out the signed advocacy form, she smiled with satisfaction. But the little motor did not stop whirring. The machine spit out page after page of notes, and with each one, the picture of Azra became clearer. It was all there – the angelic delusions, the grandiose claims, the murderous fantasies, the paranoid schizophrenic stories, the resistance to providing anything like a basis for a defense. And mixed in among these whirling delusions were snippets of reality – popcorn and Tennessee Williams and Donna Leland. On one page, Counselor Barnett had idly drawn a heart and inscribed within it the words:

  AZRA

  +

  DONNA

  4

  EVER

  Another phone call. “Counselor Barnett, I’d like to be there next time you visit Azra.”

  “Be my guest,” the counselor said with a despairing laugh. “Today at 2:15.”

  A tortuous path had led Donna to this moment. It had changed her. Her hair was not in its customary brown braid. Instead, it flowed back from her face in kinky waves, an elegant look over a wardrobe of tweeds and linens. She carried with her not a badge and gun, not even a pen and clipboard, but only a single red rose. The thorns on the stem had been carefully sliced off by the guard who had frisked her.

  Lynda Barnett led Donna into the visitation room, a glaring space of pink paint and wire-reinforced glass. Azra sat there, looking thin in his shapeless orange jumpsuit. His jaw was clean shaven, though it bore the scars of an inexpert razor. His hands were bony piles on the tabletop. He seemed to be trying to cover the shackles that bound him.

  “Hello, Donna. Thank you for coming.”

  “Hello, Azra,” she began, love and revulsion churning through her. She wanted to move toward him, but her low-heeled shoes seemed cemented to the floor. The shorn rose drooped in one hand. “How have you been?”

  A weak smile played about his lips. “I’ve been better. I’m glad to see you.”

  “I’m glad to see you, too,” Donna echoed. Counselor Barnett took a seat across from Azra, and motioned Donna to the empty seat next to him. “You can sit next to him. According to the agreement, you can even hold hands.”

  “Yes,” Donna replied, her heart catching in her throat. She walked across the room. Her heels made hollow clacks on the floor. She sat down beside him, gave him the rose, and took his hand. “Yes. I can hold your hand.”

  He stared levelly at her. Sleeplessness and fear jaundiced his eyes. “It’s not good in here.”

  “Yes,” she said, and smiled. “I don’t imagine it is.”

  “Do you remember those birds? The ones that had no legs?”

  “Yes. The ones that never light on the ground until they die.”

  “I feel like one of those birds. Only, I’ve lighted on the ground.”

  “Azra, listen to me,” Donna said, her tone growing hard. “There’s a lot to sort out. You’ve already said you killed people, hundreds of them, because you were an angel. I don’t care whether you were an angel or just think you were or just want us to think you’re, well, crazy. But none of that matters. You’re human now. That’s what I care about. And you have to live. That’s what we have to sort out. Some way that you can be human and live.”

  Azra blinked, considering. “Why are you doing this?

  Most people think I’m a monster.”

  Donna drew a long breath. “Any human who does not love, who is not loved, is a monster. I’ve seen that. But I’ve got to believe it works the other way, too, that if a monster is loved, and learns to love, well, he… he can be made human.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Lynda said you’d hired a psychiatrist?”

  “Yes, he’s waiting just outside. You can say whatever you want in our presence. Neither of us can be subpoenaed, and he’s bound by client confidentiality.”

  “Bring him in.”

  Donna nodded to the guard at the door. Tall and narrow, with bald-staring eyes, the guard motioned toward the hall. A shadow shifted there. A man appeared out of it. He was middle-aged and bearded, dressed in a shirt of teal canvas, a braided belt, stone-washed jeans, argyle socks, and penny loafers. He had a lot of hair, aggressive at chin, lip, brows, ears, and nose, and was prone to smile.

  “Hi,” the psychiatrist said, crossing the pink room and extending his hand toward Azra. “I’m Gary Gross.”

  “Doctor Gross is a clinical psychiatrist and a professor. I took three of his classes in college.” A fond look passed between them. “Before that, he had worked with my brother.” Her eyes dimmed.

  Doctor Gross shook Azra’s shackled hand. “I’m glad to meet you, Mr Michaels.”

  “Call me Azra.”

  “Azra.”

  “Yes. From Azrael. You see, I was an angel.”

  “
I know,” said the doctor kindly. “Donna let me read the interviews. Do you mind if I pull a chair up over here?”

  Azra shrugged. “Please.”

  Chair legs scudded across the scarred gray floor. The doctor set a yellow pad and a new package of Bics on the tabletop and then seated himself on Azra’s right. Donna sat at his left.

  “Well.” Doctor Gross laced fingers over one knee and leaned back in his seat. “Donna has asked me to help you two sort everything out, so let’s start at the beginning. You’ve said that, as an angel of death, you’ve tended the Chicago-Milwaukee sprawl for fifteen years now. Do you remember the first death you orchestrated?”

  “Of course.”

  “Who was it? And where?”

  “Eddy Roe, an eight-year-old boy, in Whiting. He was exploring an abandoned refinery. He was trapped in the heating conduits underground. The pipes were long disused, and the rust had pulled all the oxygen out of the air. He was breathing but dying all the same. It seemed fitting. His parents were chain smokers, living in the lee of a city of oil refineries and steel mills.”

  “What did you do? Did you chase him to the spot? Did you lock him in?”

  “No. He got in on his own. Couldn’t get out on his own.”

  “So, what did you do?”

  “I just held his hand. I sang to him. His mother and father would sing him to sleep every night. I sang him to sleep.”

  The doctor sent an appraising look to Donna. “Why a boy? Why an eight-year-old?”

  “He was the first one on the list. There were a number of others that day. Women and men, geriatrics and middle-aged. Eddy was simply the first on the list.”

  “All right. So, on that first day, you killed Eddy Roe and a number of other men and women of all ages.”

  “Arranged their deaths, yes.”

  “What did you do the day before that?”

  “What do you mean? Eddy Roe was the first one, on the first day.”

  Doctor Gross made a note on his legal pad. “Yes, and the day before, where were you? What did you do?”